Welcome to a question-answering node of the Pandeism index!!
Yet again I find myself called upon to address the random errors of those who would presume to take
Pandeism down a notch or two in favor of their own belief system -- this time, the culprit being
Christian website
GotQuestions.org's 'Pandeism' page. Their analysis begins harmlessly enough, describing
Pantheism as rejecting "a personal God" in favor of the notion that "everything is divine—every rock, plant, animal, etc.," and then describing
Deism as "the belief that a personal God created the universe but then walked away" -- debatable, but not the major error at issue. Observing that the Deistic Creator "does not intervene in the affairs of this world" and "doesn’t answer prayers, perform miracles, etc.," the piece proceeds to point out that Pandeism combines these two concepts, describing a Creator having created the universe by becoming the universe.
Up to this point, nothing especially objectionable has been proposed, but then the piece continues in presenting its understanding of Pandeism:
The Creator/Universe no longer exists as an individual, personal being independent of the cosmos. Rather, he/it is the cosmos and has “lost consciousness,” as it were; therefore, the god of pandeism is not involved in the operation of the universe, and neither can he/it at all discern human experience. “God” is as near to you as the chair you’re sitting on, and he/it is just as inert. The pandeistic god has no more concern for you than the chair has.
This comes tantalizingly close to expressing a key concept of Pandeism, but then veers sharply away from the logical outcome of this course of thought. For this author fails to grasp that Pandeism does not
stop at a Creator being "as near to you as the chair"; instead, our Creator is as near to you as
you!! It is as near to all of us as we ourselves are, for we are
part of it. And because of this, our Creator is not comparable to the inertness of the chair, for all of
our dynamicism is simply an extension of its being, of its setting forth of our Universe in order to experience existence through our lives. And that is perhaps the bigger error, to suggest that the pandeistic Creator, which is living the whole of human experience all the time, is unable to discern human experience. This simply contradicts the piece's own claim of what Pandeism is, and of what Pantheism as an element of Pandeism necessarily implies for Pandeism.
Indeed, the author concedes at the outset that "in the pantheistic view, humans are “God” as well, because they are part of the Universe," but does not seem to understand that therefore, in the pandeistic view, humans are “God” just as much, and so the human experience, the human state and action of "experiencing" is necessarily our Creator experiencing just as much as each of us and of all of us combined, along with the experiences of every animal and plant and those rocks and that chair. And the Pandeist understands that within that immeasurable spectrum of the experiences of all life forms and even nonliving things, the uniquely self-reflective capacity of humans assures
man's place in a pandeistic Universe. And because we humans have
concern for one another, through us, our Creator lives that concern. Since humans tend to be more concerned for one another than for our chairs (and chairs tend not to be concerned at all), it is simply false to think that the pandeistic god's "concern" is so limited. We are part of it; and so our concern
is its concern.
Having steeped itself in these error (as to discernment, nearness of experience, and concern), the piece then seeks to distinguish Christianity from this misunderstood construct, citing various scriptural provisions for the propositions that its deity "is a personal Being" and "is separate from and transcends His creation" -- exactly the sort of representations for which
Pandeism fully accounts, and so renders unnecessary assumptions requiring strict proof beyond what can be found in scripture, revelation, prophecy, visions, or miracles. Interestingly, the piece similarly cites scripture to insist that its deity is
omnipresent,
and that its "control of the cosmos is absolute" -- a position which would
make its deity the absolute author of all
evil and
suffering which transpires in this absolutely occupied and controlled cosmos. This, notably, is
a problem which Pandeism neatly avoids.
And despite the hundreds of thousands of generations of human suffering through violence both from nature and from our fellow man, the piece only deigns to identify a single instance claimed to show its god's "care for and involvement in His creation," that being the asserted
single instance of its god existing for a few decades as one human. But if that one instance of a deity existing as a human is sufficient to allow the deity to be lauded for care and involvement, imagine how incomparably greater a deity must be to have existed as
all humans for all of their lives (including, naturally, that one human which the piece is concerned with).